I sighed. They had obviously questioned Frenchie’s two goons, who would’ve told them exactly what had happened. I could explain my possession of the knife, and even show them the groove where it had dug itself into the door. He knew that, and I knew that. So we were playing games, and I was getting a bit fed up with it, my relief from hearing the manner of Frenchie’s death now leaving me weak and exhausted.
Nevertheless, I had sufficient energy left in my mind to realise that Filey must have been reasonably certain of my innocence throughout. So what was he after?
“Look, Mr. Filey,” I said, “this could go on for ever. Why’re you throwing this at me—and here—if you think you’ve got something on me? Why did you come on your own unless you intended to do nothing more than throw around a few words?” He didn’t answer, so I pressed on, more confidently. “Why’re you skating all round the case when it isn’t yours, anyway? Sumbury’s not your patch, it belongs to Inspector Greaves. So stop playing about. What’re you getting at?”
He didn’t even blink, but ploughed on vigorously. “You slay me, Manson. Here you are, up to your neck in the nasties, and all you can do is try to change the subject. Greaves knows what I’m doing. This is my manor, and you’re in it right now.”
“I’m going back tonight.”
“To The George? You’ve left it a bit late for that, and I don’t fancy he’ll leave the door on the latch for you. George Rice knows the score.”
“Which is?”
For the first time I heard him laugh, a shishing sound, stifled by his scorn. It was a little-used laugh. “The score is that both of you, Frenchie and you, were offered a contract to kill Philomena Wise. One of you succeeded, but it occurred to the other one that if a convenient death took place, then the survivor could collect. Packer wouldn’t quibble. That was what the affair at Port Sumbury was all about. You and Frenchie were sorting it out, and it was you who came up lucky. All we’ve got to decide now is which of you killed Philomena Wise.”
There was also the fact that the manner of her death did not fit Frenchie’s personality, whereas it could be made to fit mine with only a small amount of distortion. I didn’t see why I should offer him this idea, and wondered why he hadn’t produced it already.
Looking him directly in the eyes I said, “I throw myself on your mercy, Inspector.”
What he did next startled me. He threw back his head and laughed out loud. There was something empty about it, like a laugh in the Gartree exercise yard, but it was a true laugh. His eyes held no humour at all.
“You’ll be the death of me, Manson. I’ve got no mercy for the likes of you. What you’re throwing yourself on is my sense of humour. Laughing Harry Filey they call me round here. And I’m just going to sit back and laugh, while you dig yourself deeper and deeper in the mire. Because you know who she is now, Dorothy June Mann, and you can’t wait to get to her and find out what’s going on. And there I’ll be, laughing my head off, because you’re not going to like it when you know.”
“Tastes differ.”
“Now get out of here and get yourself lost.”
He stood to one side and watched as I levered myself to my feet. There had been a tone of bitter defeat in his voice. Perhaps, to compensate, he expected me to scuttle past him, so I straightened my back and took my time. Why the devil was I aching all over when all I’d been doing was sitting? I looked at his set face, and felt a sudden stab of pity.
“After you,” I said. “I’ve got to lock up.” I picked up the passport and dropped it in the bottom drawer of the desk. Then I looked up. “Am I to have the pistol.”
“It’s evidence,” he said flatly.
“Of what? That you took it from me, Inspector? But she might have a licence for it, in which case that’d be theft. I’d better put it back. Don’t you think?”
With a grim twist of his lips he handed it over, in two separate parts. I locked them in the drawer, had a look round, went and untied the blind, followed him to the door, turned off the light, and made sure the door locked after us.
“We might as well use the front door,” I said.
“Why not? I used it to get in.”
I glanced at him in suspicion, but he was expressionless. We went down the front stairs. The street door had a few letters in the little cage. For Wisemann Agency, no doubt. We went out into the street and I slammed the door after us. I seemed to be initiating all the actions at the moment. The air, heavy with car fumes, smelt good to me.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll have somebody come round and secure the back door. Can’t encourage burglars, can we!”
“That’d be terrible. They might nick her Crown Derby.”
“Hmm! That’s your mate over there, the fourth shadow on the left of the lamppost. We’ll meet again, no doubt.”
“In more congenial circumstances,” I agreed. They could hardly be worse.
He turned on his heel and stalked away, a trim slim figure disappearing into the night. I found it impossible to visualise him going home. To a wife, to laughing children clinging to his legs? No. He no doubt disappeared in a puff of smoke, reappearing in unblemished glory the next morning.
But I was being cynical. I said to Art, “A minute.” Then I left him in his shadow and moved quietly after Filey to the corner where he’d disappeared. He was walking towards a parked car, but now his shoulders were slumped, his legs moving with a weariness close to exhaustion. Yes, he’d possibly go home to a family, but he’d be too involved to notice them, absorbed and defeated. The car pulled past me and I stepped back into a doorway. A flick of light from a street lamp slid over his face, slack and old and grey.
Art slid to my side. “Cor strike! Reckoned he had you there.” He hadn’t even noticed the car.
For all his flip and worldly-wise confidence, Art was nevertheless shaken. And worried. He was worried because he was a known villain in that area, and he’d been committing a crime—and yet Filey had dismissed him with disdain. It could only mean that Filey was saving something more interesting for Art. Even when trouble was around, Art had to see himself as its centre point.
We began to walk to where I’d left the car. “Didn’t it make you feel small,” I asked, testing him out, “being dismissed with two words, so that he could devote his attention to the big wheel?”
“Why d’you have to talk all fancy?”
“I’ve just spent half an hour—an hour?—anyway, a long time fencing with our friend Filey. I’m having a job getting back to normal.”
I could detect his shrug, but his answer was wary. “He knows me. I ain’t anythin’ to interest him.”
“Exactly. Now, you’ve got a choice. You can go home to your folks, or you can let me put you up for the night.”
“I’ll stick with you,” he decided, without hesitation. Perhaps he wasn’t sure of a welcome from his folks, who probably didn’t even know, or care, that he was in town.
“I’ll phone The George, and you can call Mrs. Druggett.”
“She ain’t on the phone.”
“All right. In the morning you can stick with me, or make your own way back to Sumbury.”
“Depends where you’re goin’.”
“Gartree, I thought.”
“Heh! That’s great. Always wanted to see what it’s like.”
“Don’t expect a guided tour. You go in—you don’t come out again.”
“Same thing for you, then.”
“They’ll welcome me. Old friends, me and the governor.”
“You’re kiddin’.”
I was. I’d met him twice, once going in, once coming out. In fact, I wasn’t at all sure I would be able to get to Carl Packer. But I had to try. He was the only one left to ask.
Nine
Art had recovered his bounce by the time we were twenty miles on the way towards Gartree. The previous evening, at Phil’s flat, he had been subdued, showing no enthusiasm for Beethoven’s Ninth. But on the next morning, he missed no chance to advise me on my d
riving, or to criticise my lack of attention to his enthusiasm for his various adventures with Philomena. There was no mention of anything remotely legal, but I noticed that none of his activities had involved violence. He seemed to avoid it fastidiously. I simply drove and said nothing.
“Why’re you going to see Carl?” he asked at last, changing the mood, shading it.
“Something I need to know.”
“You don’t wanta believe anythin’ he says.”
“Of course not. I’ll watch my step. I never believe anything I hear.”
He caught my meaning, and grunted. There were a few moments of silence as he chose his words carefully. “He’ll tell you anythin’ to get out of it.”
“Out of what?”
“Shooting that copper.” He turned away and stared out of the side window.
Now the silence became oppressive. I hadn’t heard of a shooting, certainly not one that’d involved a police officer. A darker shade of violence had crept in.
“Shot him—you mean as in murder?” I asked, managing to keep my voice casual, as expected from a Gartree graduate.
There was no need for him to study a map, because I’d worked out our route before we left. He had no excuse for avoiding the question. “Yeah, you could say that.” His voice was slurred. The incident was tasteless and stale in his memory.
“This was on the warehouse job you told me about?”
“What else?”
“Then I take it you won’t want to meet Packer again?”
“You wasn’t thinkin’…”
“I could arrange it, perhaps, if you wanted to. You should’ve said something, when I told you who I wanted to see last night.”
“I don’t wanna meet him!” Panic gagged his sense of humour.
“You’ll wait outside in the car. I don’t need an introduction.”
He pouted childishly. “Don’t see why you wanta talk to him.”
“It’s necessary.”
Then I explained as much as I thought he should know and could appreciate. But in fact, I was trying to justify it in my mind. “With Frenchie dead, I need to know—”
“Frenchie’s dead?” he cut in.
“So you know him?”
“Never met him, face to face. Everybody knows about Frenchie. How’d it happen? When?”
“The night before last, apparently. His head was bashed in with a chunk of rock. Or so Filey said.”
“Nasty. But Filey’s a bloody liar, anyway.”
Not about that, I didn’t think. “I met Frenchie inside Gartree,” I told Art. “We weren’t exactly friends.”
“Well…you wouldn’t be. Not from what I heard.” The effort to sound disinterested put an edge to his voice. “Nippy car, this,” he observed casually. “Never thought you’d get past that wagon.”
I glanced sideways. There was a slick of sweat on his forehead, which my driving didn’t explain. “Anyway,” I went on, “with Frenchie dead, I’ll need to have a word or two with Carl Packer.”
“Such as?”
“Frenchie told me he was in Sumbury on a contract for Packer. What could that mean but the killing of your Phillie? But it doesn’t fit, does it! I just can’t see Frenchie doing anything like strangling. Can you?”
I paused, giving him the chance to take it on, and he took it reluctantly. “I wouldn’t know what a character like him’d do.”
“And if he did—how did he get hold of your scarf to do it with?”
There was a short silence. Subdued, almost sullen, he eventually answered. “You’re gettin’ at me again, ain’t you!”
“Not at all. I was dabbling in amateur psychology.”
“Oh…that stuff!”
“I learned quite a bit in college.”
“You went to college? Oxford an’ that sorta thing? Gerraway.”
“It was Cambridge, if you want to know, and I was talking about my other college. Gartree. I picked up more there than I ever did at the university. More important stuff, such as the basic means of survival. And I had the chance to meet all the best murderers.”
“Great. Brilliant.”
“Did you know, Art, there’re two categories of murders—domestic and professional. The first lot’s to do with anger and emotion, the second lot with cash. Cold and unemotional. You with me? The odd car blown up, the pub raked with gunfire, those’re pro jobs. No hatred, no fury. Or the contract killing. But of course, you know all about this, Art.”
“Why don’t y’ write a bloody book about it?”
I stopped to fill up the tank and to stretch my legs. Art stayed in the car. I wanted him to think about it and get worried, and I wanted time to think about it myself. He’d been there; there’d been a policeman killed. That came under category two, professional. I felt I was within sight of something resembling motivation. I wondered how to get information from Art without having to thump him a bit.
“What’re you gettin’ at?” he asked, as soon as I’d got the car moving again. He was too eager, too anxious.
“I was going to tell you that the real pros, the ones who make their living out of it, they never touch their victims. It’s a fact. They keep their distance.”
“You live an’ learn. Fancy that.”
“Think about it. No contact, that’s what matters. A powerful rifle, say, and your man’s gone at three hundred yards. No difficulty for a marksman. Or poison—you don’t even have to watch the poor swine dying. Or a hit-and-run. No contact—it’s the car that does it. And Frenchie’s always been the haft of a knife away, more if he threw it. But this one, Phillie’s death, there was contact there. Only the thickness of a scarf away. Physical contact, Art. Personal. Let’s hear your thinking on that.”
“You’re gettin’ at me again!” he shouted.
“Am I? If you say so.” Yet I’d overelaborated on purpose.
“You are! It was my scarf, and personal, if that’s the way you soddin’-well want it.”
I tossed a grin at him, but he was glaring stonily ahead. “Touchy, aren’t we? Guilty conscience, is it?”
“Just lay off that!”
“I’m only saying it’s very strange. There was Frenchie, sent to Sumbury to contact a certain Philomena Wise. An obvious pro killing was lined up and an obvious non-pro killing was done. So we have to accept that somebody else, other than Frenchie, came along and killed her. Are you going to believe that? Now…isn’t that a fine coincidence for you!”
“An’ that’s all you’ve been gettin’ at?” he demanded, his relief tainted with anger, that I’d left him on the hook so long.
“It’s a big ‘all,’ that’s what I mean.”
“And what d’you expect Packer to tell y’?” Suspicion still clung to him, like fog to a prowling tom cat.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a hell of a way to go for no reason.” He settled himself down into his seat, prepared to remain silent.
We were by then only a few miles from Gartree. The sky was heavy ahead. It could be raining there, but you don’t have to worry about the weather, inside. You never have to get wet, or dig your car out of a snowdrift. Unless you’re a warder, of course. But Gartree wasn’t a place you’d want to return to, and even at the thought I felt a growing uneasiness. When it came in sight, though, I found it difficult to raise any emotion at all. The point was, I realised, that I’d never seen it from the outside before. That was strange. Going in, I’d been in a van with darkened windows. Coming out, in my taxi, I’d not cared to look back. So I was approaching a strange sprawl of buildings, which could have housed anything. Something innocuous such as the splitting of an atom here and there, or the production of next year’s deadly disease—rather than the horror it did contain.
I parked the car and sat still for a few moments. Then I turned to Art. “You will sit here,” I told him, “and mind your own business. If I’m not out in an hour, send for the police.”
Thus joking, I walked to the entrance and demanded to be admitted.
>
But my nerve had gone. I wanted to turn and run. I was now too close to it, only the thickness of a wall away. I was asked my business, and then passed on to an office. There was no sight of the inmates. Only warders. The one behind the desk recognised me.
“Well, if it isn’t Manson. Can’t fit you up with your old room, I’m afraid. It’s taken.”
This tone I had never before encountered in there. I was now a civilian; better than that, I was a civilian with whom he could share an in-joke.
“I don’t intend staying,” I said. “What I wanted was to see Carl Packer, Mr. Morris.”
“Now now, you know the rules. You can’t just turn up and disrupt the whole routine like this.” There were such things as visiting days and passes.
“It’s important.”
“That’s obvious. Anybody who wants to see Packer must have a damned good reason. Care to confide? A word in the little shell-like, perhaps.”
I could tell he’d had a boring day. In fact, all his days would be boring. He’d mentioned routine. That was his life, his work. For a con, it was nothing. You might just as well be doing one thing as another. Or nothing.
“A friend of his has died,” I confided, making my tone solemn. “It was just that I thought he’d care to hear it from me.”
“Why you, if I may ask?”
“Because the police think I did it, and I wouldn’t want Packer getting that idea. He’d turn against me.”
Morris shook his head in understanding, tut-tutting. “And we wouldn’t want that would we! Who’s died?”
“Dougie French.”
“No! Well, that is good news. Here…I’ll put it out on the Tannoy. Everybody’ll want to know, and give a little cheer.”
I sighed. “So can I see Packer, Mr. Morris, please?”
He eyed me with speculation. “You’re serious?”
“Would I come here voluntarily if it wasn’t important?”
“That’s true enough,” he said with feeling, then he turned away to a phone and spoke in a mumble I couldn’t decipher.
I stood and waited. Now I could feel the pulse of life beyond the far wall, the never-silent murmur that closer-to becomes a perpetual clamour. There was a tingle in the atmosphere that nearly had me panting for breath, which is the constant pressure of detention, the smell of humanity in the mass, the prickle to the skin of violence not far removed.
Farewell Gesture Page 11